The wind was howling as they worked on the semi the next day. During the night, Monroe had decided to grind down most of the layered weld he had put on the linkage. He had instead decided to use some metal scraps to reinforce it.

  Meanwhile, Trace was inspecting the cables that connected the trailer to the semi. He had learned more about how semi-trucks and their trailers worked during his learning session the night before. Whereas before he would have been poking around mostly blindly, looking for anything obviously wrong, now he at least knew what each of the cables did.

  It wasn’t enough for him to immediately say where the problem codes were springing from. At least no more than before. Still, it would allow him to narrow everything down much easier.

  He took his time inspecting the connector, noting the sand that had made its way inside the ports. He would need to borrow the air compressor later to blow it out when he reconnected everything. Some tape to seal it off wouldn’t be remiss either.

  As far as he could tell, the connector itself was in good condition. All of them were.

  The thick cables didn’t appear to have any worn spots, or weak areas that would indicate a break either. Leaving the cables to flap in the wind, he slid underneath the trailer. Down here in the gulley, there was less exposure to the wind and blowing sand, but there was no way to escape it entirely.

  Overall, the truck was in great condition -for a vehicle that had been left in the badlands for as long as it had been. The hardened paint had been worn through in spots, and more than a couple of seals had begun to be worn away.

  That was the truck. The trailer was a different story entirely. One that became immediately obvious to Trace as soon as he slid beneath its carriage. Where the truck had been hardened for travel through the badlands, no such care had been given to the trailer.

  There were aluminum panels holding a series of large batteries in place. The issue was they hadn’t even been welded in place. The manufacturer had gone with a mix of automotive glue and rivets. Both of which had been down by the sand. Rivets were made from a soft aluminum, and automotive glue, while sturdy, could most certainly be worn away by sand.

  In most other environments, this trailer would have been perfectly fine. In the badlands, it had been destroyed. This likely wasn’t its first trip through the state but instead its second, or possibly third, if he had to guess. Either way, the gusting sands had eaten away at the rivets and glue, exposing the batteries and their connections that were normally hidden. Then the sand had gone to work on them.

  Gingerly, Trace moved his head closer to the exposed portion of the front battery. He still had some expanding foam left that he could use to surround the battery with. It would have to be thoroughly cleaned out beforehand, but the foam would help to keep it clean. The batteries didn’t look as though they were actually damaged, the connectors on the other hand… They were trashed.

  He took several pictures and then snipped the entire connector off while ensuring that he had left enough wire to put it back on again. Then he did the same thing with each of the remaining batteries.

  Strictly speaking, they didn’t need the batteries on the trailer to be working just to move it. However, it would make everything easier. The primary function of the extra batteries was to give the semi additional range in the badlands. They also had two secondary features, which were to power the brakes on the trailer, and the assistance motors that kicked in when going up hills.

  Normally, the batteries received a trickle charge from the semi, as this model didn’t have its own wireless energy-receiving unit. The cable running from the cab to the trailer couldn’t handle more energy than the occasional burst. That also meant that without the batteries, they would quickly fry the cable if they needed to do any serious braking.

  Trace stuffed the connectors into his bag and hurried over to the van to retrieve his tools and some additional supplies.

  Inside the building, he set about working on them. It wasn’t going to be pretty. In actuality, it was going to be downright ugly, but it would work, and that was what they needed at the moment.

  Laying all of the connectors out in front of him on the floor, he sighed and got to work. The plastic of the connectors had been eaten away by the sands in several places and would need to be reconstructed. The wire looms had held up better, if only marginally. They had been wrapped in a fireproof fabric, and then encased in plastic shielding. The plastic shielding had largely disintegrated, but the fireproof fabric had held up remarkably well.

  With the help of all the other connectors, Trace was able to figure out where each of the wires that had fallen out were meant to be placed. After that, all he needed to do was go underneath the trailer one more time and retrieve the other side of the connector. A task that actually turned out to be much easier than anticipated, due to how the trailer was constructed.

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  If rebuilding the connector didn’t work out, then he could always just wire it directly up using this method.

  With the female connector in hand, he was able to begin reconstructing the connectors. Quick-drying epoxy and glue were the key ingredients in this particular endeavor. He had needed both male and female connectors to ensure that everything lined up properly. Since he was creating nearly a third of the connector from scratch, it wasn’t something that he could simply wing.

  Hours passed as he set about his task.

  Outside, Monroe moved Black Betty back up beside the building and began charging the van again.

  He clomped inside with the battery pack and plugged it into the wall, pushing the electrical system to its limits. They were lucky the place still had power in the first place due to what must have been an absolutely ancient, buried, hard-wired connection. It was not something that they could pull a ton of juice through, not without risking it failing anyway.

  Slow and steady was better.

  “How’s it going?” He rumbled, pulling off his hood with a sigh of relief.

  “I just finished rebuilding the last connector. I’m only waiting for it to dry now. Hopefully, you don’t need any of this for your own repairs,” Trace said, showing his tube of epoxy that had barely anything left in it.

  “If I’m trying to hold something together with that instead of a proper weld, then there is an issue.” The big man replied with a laugh. He leaned backward, cracking his back with several loud pops before settling onto the ground. “What did you find out about the trailer?”

  “Rivets and automotive glue for the battery panels, no welds. They started to come off and sag, letting sand in to begin its work.” He indicated the connectors. “I’ll need to solder all of these back on with wire sleeves and tape. I’ll use some of my remaining foam on each of them as well after I’ve tested the connections, of course. Then we’ll blow out all the sand, and you can tack up the panels as securely as you want. These connectors will hold, but I can do a better job back home, so I would suggest not doing too many of them.”

  Monroe nodded. “The linkage is done, again. I’m happier with it now. It’s a chunky POS, and still weaker than it should be, but the metal definitely added some strength to it. I’m confident it won’t break on us as we attempt to climb out of the gulley now.”

  “Yeah, that would have sucked.” Trace slapped his thighs and stood. “Alright, well, I’m going to finish this, and then I am finally going to open the back of the trailer.”

  All the repaired connectors went into his bag, and after securing his suit again, he ventured out into the storm. Trace quickly dropped off the supplies he no longer needed in the van and retrieved his various soldering supplies. His soldering pen wasn’t exactly the best tool for this job, but it should manage, if only barely. Luckily, the battery wires weren’t any thicker; then they really would have had a problem. He could have managed, but it would have been a ghetto hack job.

  Soldering on and installing each connector took him the better part of an hour and a half. The first couple took the longest. However, there were still ten of the connectors that needed to be done. No matter how much he improved, each wire loom contained dozens of wires that needed to be stripped, soldered together, and then individually covered for their protection.

  Doing something like that took time. Still, he managed it, and when he was finally done and had tested each one, he only discovered a short on one wire. A problem that was easily rectified.

  Trudging back up to the van, he stored his soldering equipment and put the bottle of expanding foam in his bag. In the building, he took a moment to grab the battery pack, ignoring the napping Monroe.

  A few minutes later, he had the air compressor hooked up to power and was blowing out the connectors behind the semi. Reconnecting them, he taped them up and then slid beneath the trailer alongside the jack and both jack stands.

  Trace took extra care to blow out as much of the battery compartment as he could reach. Then did a thorough job on the connectors. With that completed, he placed the jack underneath the aluminum panel and began to jack it up, stopping when then there was still a gap of several inches. Grabbing the can of expanding foam, he sprayed it around the connector and the wire loom that he had messed with. Then he quickly finished jacking the aluminum plate into position.

  He shifted one of the jack stands into position, raising its arm until the plate would rest on it instead of the jack. It would still drop a little as he lowered the jack, but that was fine, he was mainly trying to prevent more sand from getting inside. Forming the foam had already been accomplished.

  Trace was beginning to work on cleaning out the fourth battery compartment when Monroe appeared with his welding unit. Perfect timing on his part, as they only had the two jack stands and one jack. Plugging in the welding unit, he pumped the jack a couple of times and proceeded to give the plate a couple of quick tack welds.

  “You weren’t joking. The heads on these rivets are all completely gone.” Monroe said after he had taken a moment to inspect them.

  Trace was putting foam around the last connector when he heard that. “Yup, I estimate this is probably the driver’s second or third run through the badlands using this trailer. It would have been fine in most other places, but it wasn’t designed for this environment.”

  “Do they even make trailers for this place?” Monroe muttered.

  Trace shrugged and jacked the plate into position for the man before sliding out underneath the trailer. He shook the can of expanding foam. It had barely been enough, and only then because he had cut down on how much he used after the first two.

  He was right next to the rear doors of the trailer when he popped up. It was time to do something they had been putting off for a while now.

  The lock opened on a prompting from the same crystal key that controlled the semi. With a squeal of partially seized hinges, he forced the door open and looked inside.

  It was a half-full load, and contained a little bit of everything, at least judging by the labels on the crates. There were ingredients, medical supplies, tech hardware, and from the completely nonsensical name, items that he was willing to bet were pharmaceutical drugs. The driver had clearly been taking any and all jobs that he could get his hands on.

  If they repacked it, then all of it could stay and there would still be room for Black Betty. Of course, actually getting her inside without ramps would be another problem altogether.

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